Mobile telephones, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable music players, and similar devices are examples of what is herein referred to as a “mobile smart device.” A mobile smart device typically has processing power for running programs and applications and may host its own operating system. As the processing power increases and the form factor of such devices is reduced, mobile smart devices blur the lines between formerly separate functions, such as personal computer, telephone, music player, pager, text messaging device, and so on. Mobile smart devices typically contain some form of volatile and non-volatile mass storage memory. One type of mass storage memory conforms to the universal serial bus (USB) mass storage device class communications protocols. Devices that support this standard are referred to as mass storage class (MSC) devices.
The USB mass storage specification does not require any particular file system to be used on conforming devices. Instead, it provides a simple interface to read and write sectors of data, much like the low-level interface used to access a hard drive. Operating systems may treat the MSC device like a hard drive and can format it with a file system if they so prefer. A popular form of mass storage memory used in mobile smart devices is the Secure Digital® or SD card co-developed by SanDisk Corporation. SD cards may be formatted with a file system. SD cards are available in a variety of form factors, including miniSD, microSD, secure digital high capacity (SDHC) cards.
There are many mobile smart devices on the market. Each mobile device has a specific set of criteria for what types of digital media that it can or cannot accommodate and where the digital media must be located within the device or within the device file system. For example, each mobile smart device may support its own particular set of file types, e.g., image files, audio files, video files, games, applications, etc. For each type, the mobile smart device may only support files having certain characteristics. For example, a mobile smart device may support video files, but only video files using a particular codec, compression method, screen size or resolution, frame rate, and so on.
Likewise, each mobile smart device may require that files of certain types be located in certain locations within the device or within the file system. For example, one type of mobile phone or cell phone may store music files in one directory, image files in another directory, video files in a third directory, etc., while another mobile phone may store all files in the root directory of the device file system. Each mobile device may have other limitations or conventions, including file naming conventions, maximum file sizes, maximum number of files that may be stored in any particular directory, and so on. Each mobile device may also support a particular file system or file systems.
Because each mobile smart device has its own particular requirements, a user wishing to transfer media or other files to the mobile smart device must be cognizant of the specific requirements and limitations of the mobile smart device. For example, a user may desire to change the ring tone of this cell phone, which uses a microSD card for mass storage. In one scenario, the user may remove the microSD card from the cell phone and place it in a card reader attached to a personal computer, use a drag and drop file manager such as Windows® Explorer® to copy an MP3 file containing the desired ring tone to the microSD card, and reinsert the microSD card into the cell phone.
However, if the cell phone does not support the MP3 format, if the user has not placed the music file in the proper location in file system supported by the microSD card, or if the user has not followed the naming convention expected by the cell phone, the user may find that the cell phone cannot find the file, does not recognize the file as a music file, or cannot play the file. Music or audio files come in a variety of file formats. The audio data may be subject to various encoding and compression schemes, and may be encapsulated within a wrapper or container format. Not only do video files come in a similar variety of encoding, compression, and encapsulation formats, video files have additional characteristics that may affect compatibility with the mobile smart device, such as video resolution, color depth, frame rate, etc.
Some mobile smart devices require the user to use proprietary file copying software that is specific to a particular mobile smart device, usually provided by the manufacturer of the mobile smart device or by third party developers. While this approach solves some of the disadvantages described above, it suffers some disadvantages of its own, in that proprietary software is a one-device solution. A user that desires to copy music, for example, onto a cell phone and a music player from different manufacturers will need to have two separate programs—one to manage files on the cell phone and another to manage files on the music player. Furthermore, if the user upgrades his or her cell phone to a new make or model, for example, the proprietary software for the old cell phone may not work for the new cell phone, requiring the user to maintain multiple programs and perhaps learn new programs every time he or she upgrades his mobile smart devices.
Accordingly, in light of these disadvantages described above, there exists a need for systems, methods, and computer readable media for configuring a rewriteable non-volatile memory for presentation of media by a selected media presentation device model.